UNO Graduate Students Earn Prestigious Recognition at Top AI Conference

Two College of Information Science & Technology (CIST) graduate students will present their groundbreaking research at the 39th Annual AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence — an honor achieved by less than 5% of submissions.

published: 2025/02/19

➡️ What’s new:

UNO Ph.D. student Zachary Hansen and M.S. student Eleuterio Lillo Portero have been selected to present their research at the 39th Annual AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-25)—one of the most prestigious AI conferences in the world. Both students have co-authored these publications with Dr. Jorge Fandinno, a 2024 NSF CAREER Award winner.

💡 Why it matters:

With 12,957 submissions and an acceptance rate of less than 5% for oral presentations, this achievement places Hansen and Lillo Portero among the top AI researchers globally. Their work highlights UNO’s growing impact in artificial intelligence research and its commitment to advancing the field.

📝 The research:

Zachary Hansen & Dr. Jorge Fandinno – Recursive Aggregates as Intensional Functions in Answer Set Programming: Semantics and Strong Equivalence
Eleuterio Lillo Portero & Dr. Jorge Fandinno – Solving Epistemic Logic Programs using Generate-and-Test with Propagation

📅 The conference:

Event: 39th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence
Date: February 25 – March 4, 2025
Location: Pennsylvania Convention Center, Philadelphia, PA
Hosted by: Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), the premier scientific society for AI research

🎤 What they’re saying:

Dr. Jorge Fandinno, Assistant Professor, CIST: “Having two UNO students selected for oral presentations at AAAI-25 is a remarkable achievement. Their research represents the cutting edge of AI and logic programming.”

🌎 The big picture:

This milestone underscores UNO’s leadership in artificial intelligence research, the excellence of its graduate programs, and the mentorship of outstanding faculty. As AI continues to shape the future, UNO students are contributing to its evolution on a global stage.

Hansen and Lillo Portero will present their findings in Philadelphia next February. Their work will be published in the conference proceedings, further establishing UNO as a research powerhouse in AI.

Read more: Learn more about the AAAI Conference and UNO’s IS&T NLPKR Lab